Brittney Borowicz is an integrated marketing professional with a strong communications background specializing in journalism, public relations and social media. Originally from the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Brittney has spent the past few years working with entrepreneurs and small start-ups in the Chicagoland area to enhance their marketing and social media efforts.

Prior to her current role as the marketing manager for a computer networking company, Brittney realized her affinity for all things media and marketing while working in radio and television and as a professional presenter. Later, she began working at a couple of small marketing agencies in Chicago as a Public Relations and Sales Director and Account Manager, which required her to be well-versed in coordinating specialized public and media relations strategies, creative marketing initiatives and cohesive sales process implementations.

As a strong believer in intimate consumer/brand involvement, Brittney helps her clients create content that engages and educates brand audiences while establishing each individual or company as a thought leader in their industry.

Why is LinkedIn So Important? + A LinkedIn Share Guide

Although it is typically underrated among other social media platforms, LinkedIn is the most popular and largest professional networking site available today. With over 240 million active users and 3 million businesses having a company page, it's the perfect platform for getting hired, connecting with other business professionals and business-to-business (B2B) networking and sales.

So why is LinkedIn so important? There are many reasons, but here are a few that were mentioned above...

Personal branding - LinkedIn is one of the few and free ways to promote yourself as a professional and/or thought-leader in your industry. Not only do you have an online resume on display, but its home feed allows you to share your work, other industry-related news, articles and so on with the rest of your network. In addition, joining groups and commenting on other peoples' posts allows you to share your knowledge with people outside of your network. This personal branding can help land you a job or even advance the career you already have.

Connecting with other professionals - LinkedIn is a great place to make strong connections with other people in your industry or professionals with similar interests. As mentioned above, LinkedIn allows professionals to share their knowledge with each other. In addition, don't be afraid to seek advice from other professionals or even connect to do business with that individual in the future.

B2B networking and sales - With over three million businesses on LinkedIn, it's the perfect place to find sales leads for B2B companies. LinkedIn has a powerful search function that allows a person to search within specific industries or even for people with a certain job title to do business with. Company pages are also a great way to keep track of competitors, partners and other interesting companies.

Now that you know a few reasons why this business networking platform is so important... Are you on LinkedIn but don't know where to start? Or maybe you have a profile but need some easy ways to help make your presence known.

I have included, what I like to call, a "LinkedIn Share Guide" below. I like to share this guide with people who are new to LinkedIn or want to make more of an impact on their network without doing too much work.